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#TheEndOfTheMovie

I have spent my entire life wanting to make movies and arguing with those who said I couldn’t. I even made a couple along the way. But recently I found myself engulfed in a situation that made me not wanna make movies anymore. Which is an amazing feat considering my parents couldn’t accomplish that in 30 years and they’re Cuban. Who knew that two years of hapless preproduction and the tectonic shift of an entire industry was all it would take.

Making movies was always my lighthouse. No matter what horrible things were going on in my life, no matter relationship status or living situation, the desire to make movies was there. It was my rock, my sanity and suddenly five months ago my sanity was gone. After making a feature length film three years before, spending a year writing a new script and another year in preproduction of that script the project was suddenly at an uncomfortable standstill and the only words of solace that I was being told by production was, “This is the way it works.” As time moved on and the project kept getting pushed back and pushed back, I found myself swimming in a stew of “presale distribution” discussions and being swayed towards holding off for hopes of smaller but still “name actors” in particular roles for the sole purpose of getting said distribution and the budget had increased to the point of unrealistic. Especially considering the project was basically meant to be an R rated, super punk-rock, fuck off finger in the air to the romantic comedy genre. That was the spirit it was written in and this business vibe was starting water down the core. So needless to say I inevitably became ok with the project getting pushed back YET AGAIN to the point of being postponed indefinitely.

Now as all this crap was going on with me, the “movie business” was going off the rails. Every day the industry feeds were mind boggling. Disney was buying everything, every other studio was desperately trying to get in the shared universe game, Warner Brothers even announced that they weren’t going to make any original movies for the next five years before shutting down their independent branch. What’s known as the “middle budget drama” was slowly not being made anymore. The easy way to bitch about this is to say that Hollywood is ruining movies and blah blah blah but as I sat there licking my fresh wounds I realized that it’s not their fault. The “Hollywood machine” is a business, what matters to them is asses in seats and the reality is that the general audience isn’t interested in watching those movies in a theater. More and more people are actually watching small independent movies and thanks to the internet and Netflix they’re easier to find and because of that fact the audience has grown accustom to watching these movies at home. On their iPads, computers and phones, the independent film viewing experience has become this insanely intimate thing to the audience and that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

Now I’m not gonna lie, as someone who grew up wanting to make movies in the DIY Sundance glory days of El Mariachi the realization that the kind of movie that I’m interested in making is not the one that gets a theatrical release anymore kind of killed me a little. I mean this was like watching the end of the movie as I knew it and it wasn’t even a profound mercy killing, it was more a shotgun blast to the face. For Christ sake Martin Scorsese can’t get more than a limited release and that’s the fucking guy that made Goodfellas. If he could barely get The Wolf of Wall Street made (and yes, that actually took years of begging for money and is now in a scandal over where the money actually came from) what were the odds that good ole Mr. Hollywood was gonna answer the phone for me. So why bother to try and make movies at all? I know this sounds grim but I promise it ends happy and it’s about to get there, I swear.

After looking at all the data and taking my latest “filmmaking experience” into account, I decided that I didn’t want any part of it. I still wanted to create but I didn’t want to play a game where I kill myself making a small personal movie to then be offered to make Jurassic World or Black Panther. I know that sounds like an insane jump but that’s literally what’s happening to writers and directors at festivals now. So I decided that I would make a site. It would be my way to reject the system while simultaneously welcoming an audience and by being my own distributor I could make whatever I want without it being corrupted by the worry of trying to sell it before it’s even made. The “way it works” wouldn’t apply to me anymore and why stop at movies? Why not a comic strip? I could make a TV show and do live events. Books, music, I could just rant like a lunatic and post it up. Kind of like I’m doing now.

When all was said and done, the end of the movie (as I knew it) killed a very specific childhood dream of mine but it gave birth to a much greater reality where I can speak directly to you, the audience, without any interference and promise that my blood, sweat and tears will be in everything on this site. That commerce will only come into play LONG after creation and if all this sounds like your particular cup of tea then you will be met here with open arms……